Professor Harry Cheng and Professor Cristina Davis have each been awarded the Innovator of the Year Award. According to the UC Davis Office of Research, the award recognizes “individual faculty or staff, or teams (which may also include students) whose inventive, innovative, or entrepreneurial activities have had a measurable societal impact or have a very strong potential to do so.” The award has granted both Professor Cheng and Professor Davis $10,000 each to fund their research.

Professor Cheng is the developer of the UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education (C-STEM), which seeks to “increase student interest and transform computing and STEM education in both formal and informal K-12 programs.”

Professor Davis has co-founded two startups affiliated with UC Davis, SensIT Ventures, Inc. and XTB Laboratories, Inc. Her latest venture is a miniature device that measures human breath in a way that allows for close diagnosis and monitoring of medical conditions.